Bad Habit Removal Techniques

Removal of Bad Habits

The key to the removal of bad habits is understanding what causes them in the first place. Once we know what causes the bad habit they become simple to remove.

Bad habits are actually very simple to remove with NLP techniques, for example if the habit is smoking then we need to replace the habit with something more healthy, ensure the mind is focusing on health, remove the satisfaction of the nicotine and remove any past emotion associated with the smoking. We do this with a combination of NeuroLinguistic Programming, hypnosis and Timeline Therapy®

The Decision Destroyer

Habits often need a few techniques to remove them, however you weren’t born with that bad habit were you? So at some point in time your unconscious mind decided that that habit would be OK to install into your behaviour – listen to this audio file and see what happens to that old bad habit now…

When ever we fall in love, buy a watch, make a decision – or anything else for that matter – we run a strategy in our minds. A strategy is an unconscious series of steps that we run through in order to achieve an outcome… that of falling in love buying a watch etc.

Strategies will often start with a visual cue, such as ‘I saw that watch in the window’ or ‘ I saw her and she looked attractive’ – these visuals cues we assign the letter V.

Next will come either another V or visual step, or may be a feeling (which we give K for kinesthetic) or perhaps one might hear a voice or sound (which we give an A for auditory) or maybe we get that little chatter box voice in our head (we give this Ad for auditory digital).

So, a typical strategy for buying a watch could be:

V – visual ‘I saw it in a window’

K – kinesthetic ‘I try it on to see how it feels’

Ad- auditory digital ‘I talk to myself in my mind to work out if I can afford it’

K – kinaesthetic ‘I get a warm feeling inside’

Action – I buy the watch

So, what has this got to do with bad habits?

Bad habits can often be formed when a strategy loops around and has no exit point. So in the example above, if we performed step 3 ‘I talk to myself in my mind to work out if I can afford it’ then looped back to step 2 ‘I try it on to see how it feels’ then we’d never make a decision and a habit of indecision could form.
Alternatively the opposite could be true – if we went from step 1 ‘I saw it in a window’ to step 4 ‘I get a warm feeling inside’ then we would bypass any ‘internal checks’ of affordability and a habit of buying unecessary things forms.

In NLP we step in to these strategies, break them down to the component parts. We then re-assemble them ensuring there are exit points where required and no loops to get stuck in.

Of course some habits run deeper than this and techniques which involve changing other behaviours & beliefs will have to be undertaken, for example – biting nails can be a strategy for ovecoming nerves – so we can install a new (and more healthy strategy) to overcome nerves PLUS alter the physical behaviour of nail biting using what’s known as a ‘Swish Pattern’.

A swish pattern takes an undesired action and replaces it with a more desirable one – here are some great examples of replacing actions:

Over eating – we replace the action of opening the fridge door to get unheatlhy food with a more helpful action

Nail biting – we replace the action of lifting the hands to the face with an innocuous scratch of the ear!

These sound like miracle cures… and often they will work that way exactly!

What if you removed your bad habits?

Imagine what you would be able to do, how much more could you enjoy life if you were free of the obligation of your bad habit?

For a relaxed chat about how you can remove your bad habits then please do give me a call and we can gently discuss how I could work with you from my base here in Bridport, Dorset

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